wildcardjack:Although doing the math to make a quarter ton of pot neutrally buoyant might be above the mental paygrade of a pot smoker.

Agreed the tanks were the way to go to hide the loot. You can justify having up to five tanks on a dive like that. Lot a weed fits in a steel tank. And you would avoid all the buoyancy issues that way. (the weight required for neutral density changes with depth)

Wow. That sure was a hell of an effort to smuggle the pot. If our law enforcement guys had an brains, they would've just confiscated his weed and scuba gear and kicked his a*s back to Canada. I predict a run on scuba gear.

Oldiron_79:Headso: if you are scuba diving why swim so close to the surface ...

Well plant matter tends to be bouyant.

Yeah, he would have needed to put it in a pressure-tight container and added weights to get it to neutral buoyancy.

wildcardjack:And buckshot is fairly cheap. Although doing the math to make a quarter ton of pot neutrally buoyant might be above the mental paygrade of a pot smoker.

You need more than that--you simply dive with it and a bag of it will either burst (it's going to have a *LOT* of lift) or be compressed down and now you aren't neutrally buoyant anymore. Besides, he had 3kg, not a quarter ton.

I think he might have fared better if he took an empty scuba tank as his pot container, paired with a real tank of air for the dive and then swum deep enough to avoid most of the ship danger.

Apik0r0s:Any money on the first "drug drone" story being within the next two months?

I'm surprised they aren't already in use. If I were trying to get drugs across any reasonably open border that's how I would do it.

When you're SCUBA diving, the deeper you go, the quicker you get nitrogen into your bloodstream. Too much nitrogen, and you get the bends. So if you want to travel long distances, it makes sense to stay as close to the surface as possible.

Krieghund:Headso: if you are scuba diving why swim so close to the surface ...

When you're SCUBA diving, the deeper you go, the quicker you get nitrogen into your bloodstream. Too much nitrogen, and you get the bends. So if you want to travel long distances, it makes sense to stay as close to the surface as possible.

The pressure changes at shallow depths are the most dramatic so you add a bigger risk of lung over-expansion or an embolism that way. Plus it would be very difficult to maintain consistent depth. Not to mentioning this would be nearly impossible to navigate. And the current would put you in Florada before you reached the other side. Plus the shipping traffic.

I think the "easiest" thing to do would be stay on the bottom the whole way and run a line with GPS. Come back in a few days with a re-breather and a shiatload of slung tanks full of weed and just follow the line and do your decompression stops as you get shallower on the other side. Extra tanks with a re-breather would only be questioned by someone who knew a lot about technical diving.

Of course the total cost of this endeavor would probably be around three times the cash you could ever sell your weed for.

When you're SCUBA diving, the deeper you go, the quicker you get nitrogen into your bloodstream. Too much nitrogen, and you get the bends. So if you want to travel long distances, it makes sense to stay as close to the surface as possible.

The pressure changes at shallow depths are the most dramatic so you add a bigger risk of lung over-expansion or an embolism that way. Plus it would be very difficult to maintain consistent depth. Not to mentioning this would be nearly impossible to navigate. And the current would put you in Florada before you reached the other side. Plus the shipping traffic.

I think the "easiest" thing to do would be stay on the bottom the whole way and run a line with GPS. Come back in a few days with a re-breather and a shiatload of slung tanks full of weed and just follow the line and do your decompression stops as you get shallower on the other side. Extra tanks with a re-breather would only be questioned by someone who knew a lot about technical diving.

Of course the total cost of this endeavor would probably be around three times the cash you could ever sell your weed for.

Not to mention, it's the Canadian-US border. He's making this more complicated that it needs to be.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/senate-told-drones-now-patrolling-u-s-canada-b or der-1.802693

No, I mean the smugglers using drones.

Krieghund:When you're SCUBA diving, the deeper you go, the quicker you get nitrogen into your bloodstream. Too much nitrogen, and you get the bends. So if you want to travel long distances, it makes sense to stay as close to the surface as possible.

Would that actually be an issue with a river?

1) Your down time would be short and not all that deep. Would you even need decompression?

2) You're going to come up gradually with the contour of the river. You would have to check the tables but I would suspect that would provide enough decompression.

Mobius strip of human stupidity:I think the "easiest" thing to do would be stay on the bottom the whole way and run a line with GPS. Come back in a few days with a re-breather and a shiatload of slung tanks full of weed and just follow the line and do your decompression stops as you get shallower on the other side. Extra tanks with a re-breather would only be questioned by someone who knew a lot about technical diving.

Of course the total cost of this endeavor would probably be around three times the cash you could ever sell your weed for.

GPS while diving? What are you going to do, trail an antenna?

And why a rebreather? It's night, who is going to notice bubbles?

As for the current, why worry about it? Simply factor it into your plans. If the river is moving 2mph and your swim will take half an hour simply expect to wind up a mile downstream on the other side. Of course you'll need to figure out just how much you actually drift but it's not like you have to fight it.

Loren:Bill_Wick's_Friend: Loren: I'm surprised they aren't already in use

They are, and have been for a few years.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/senate-told-drones-now-patrolling-u-s-canada-b or der-1.802693

No, I mean the smugglers using drones.

Krieghund: When you're SCUBA diving, the deeper you go, the quicker you get nitrogen into your bloodstream. Too much nitrogen, and you get the bends. So if you want to travel long distances, it makes sense to stay as close to the surface as possible.

Would that actually be an issue with a river?

1) Your down time would be short and not all that deep. Would you even need decompression?

2) You're going to come up gradually with the contour of the river. You would have to check the tables but I would suspect that would provide enough decompression.

Mobius strip of human stupidity: I think the "easiest" thing to do would be stay on the bottom the whole way and run a line with GPS. Come back in a few days with a re-breather and a shiatload of slung tanks full of weed and just follow the line and do your decompression stops as you get shallower on the other side. Extra tanks with a re-breather would only be questioned by someone who knew a lot about technical diving.

Of course the total cost of this endeavor would probably be around three times the cash you could ever sell your weed for.

GPS while diving? What are you going to do, trail an antenna?

And why a rebreather? It's night, who is going to notice bubbles?

As for the current, why worry about it? Simply factor it into your plans. If the river is moving 2mph and your swim will take half an hour simply expect to wind up a mile downstream on the other side. Of course you'll need to figure out just how much you actually drift but it's not like you have to fight it.

I'm not sure where this guy was crossing. But the picture on the Wiki page shows a pretty insane dive that would take hours.

Lots of rebreathers make bubbles. That's not the issue. It's having enough gas to make a very long dive while still carrying a bunch of dummy tanks filled with weed. You would need to consume all the gas you could carry just to make the trip with open circuit. So you would need to fill the tanks with deco gas and not weed. With a re-breather all but two tiny tanks would be fake. The five others would be the dope stash. The bigassed tank of O2 alone would be pretty huge and make a nice payload.

Some rivers have enough current to rip yorr mask off. It's manageable but the bottom crawl would have to be done with an ice ax. And would need a submersible GPS. I cannot imagine navigating it any other way.

Again all that's pulled out of my ass after looking at this picture. I am sure the crossing is much easier near the city.

The St Clair river dumps about 180,000 to 200,000 gallons/second which is about 1/3 of what the Mississippi river passes but flows at about 2/3 the speed of the Mississippi river. At the point of this guys crossing, the river is probably over 500 yards across. There is a shipping channel dredged in there that is in the the range of 30 to 70 feet deep and there are holes in the river bottom that go to well over 100 feet in depth. All this to say that the St Clair river is a formidable force of nature. You can't just swim straight across the St. Clair river either. You'll exit the water a mile downstream of where you entered. There are folks in boats who fish out there all up and down the river all night long every day of the week, so it's quite possible someone spotted this joker and called him in.